Australian Army Journal

DISCIPLINE
Hazing in the ADF:
A Culture of Denial?
The ADF has endured decades of little scandals, and some bigger ones, in relation
to hazing. Unless there is genuine and sustained cultural change in the ADF,
hazing will continue, and the scandals will continue. This is a dreadful prospect.
Scandal is a blunt instrument. It punishes the innocent as well as the guilty,
because it punishes an entire organisation. As Sherman puts it, ‘Scandal is a public
act of labeling … a ceremony of status degradation’. 77 It is, indeed, almost the only
way society can punish an organisation.
Scandal results from a widespread sense among the public that the organisation
has breached the important social trust placed on it, that its real, informal goals
have deviated from its stated, legitimate goals. 78 In policing, corrupt officers have a
stated goal of preventing crime, but a real goal of committing crime.
What of the ADF. What does it exist for?
The men who General Monash was so proud to command on the Western Front
in 1918 enlisted for many and varied reasons, but one element is neatly
expressed by a Norman Lindsay recruiting poster. The scene is an Australian
farm which has been captured by German soldiers, presumably after an invasion.
A young man watches in horror as his father is savagely beaten. In the background a
young woman is seized by leering Germans, her fate obvious. The poster demands:
‘Will you fight now, or wait for THIS?’ 79 Gauche to modern eyes, the poster
encapsulates why Australia has a military service. The ADF exists to use force,
perhaps far away, in order to preserve the safety of the Australian people.
In particular, the ADF exists to protect Australians from brutality and lawless
violence.
Australian Army Journal
Culture edition 2013, Volume X, Number 3 Page 122